Oh Say Can You See...

Just a quicky post tonight - we were out looking for the Space Shuttle (last night in orbit tonight - landing tomorrow, 31 July), and the International Space Station, both making a pass close to 8pm. We never saw the Shuttle - it likely is maneuvering for it's landing tomorrow and passed too early for us to spot. But the Shuttle was bright, even though it only rose 19 degrees off the SW horizon and was over 900 km (550 miles) downrange of us, and was easily spotted in the bright twilight. I tried an exposure, but was late getting out and didn't do a good job of recording it - I promise better in the future!


But in the deepening twilight, other bright stars played peek-a-boo with a few light clouds softly lit by the rosy glow of the sunset nearly an hour earlier. Here is an exposure (cropped from a 24mm lens, 30 seconds, F/4, ISO 400) of an asterism everyone knows currently high in the Northwest. Can you spot it (click the image for a larger view)?


For those who need a little help, the giveaway is the arc of 4 stars above leading to a bowl of 4 stars among the clouds. Yes, the Big Dipper is high in the NW sky and is easily spotted even from town. The Dipper is an asterism - a pattern of stars that is not a constellation. What's that you say - the Big Dipper is a constellation? Actually no, it is part of the much larger constellation Ursa Major, or Big Bear, the dipper and handle forming part of the Bear's hindquarters and long tail. To see all of Ursa Major, you need a pretty dark sky, but the dipper is easy to spot, and is visible all year long from the northern part of the country. From here in Arizona it will dip below our northern horizon in the early evening in a few months, thanks to our southern latitude and the curved surface of the earth....

Neighborhood Portrait

While visiting Elinor last week on our swing through Texas, she asked for our assistance in helping clear some of her husband David's estate. I've found homes for most of his photo gear with a donation to the scholarship fund of the local camera collectors, and took a couple boxes of books for my own library (a small percentage of what remains!).

One of her offerings this trip was a small telescope in the corner of David's computer room - a 70s vintage 5" Celestron telescope. Elinor always believed that our mutual friend Bob Goff, who worked for Celestron then, was responsible in some way in it's construction, so held on to it. Since he was just about my best friend in Tucson, Elinor thought I should provide a home for it, which I'm proud to do. David had tricked it out - mounting it on a sturdy tripod with very smooth altazimuth movements. It makes a perfect grab-and-go scope to keep near the back door.

To that end, I set it up to take a peek at the quarter moon tonight. It needs a touch of collimation alignment work, which I'll leave for another night, but thought I'd snap a shot of the moon with the Canon XSi. Here is a 250th second, ISO 400 with the F/10 telescope. Not bad for untracked tripod mount!

Glass Sorting!

One of the more interesting operations at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab is the glass sorting before casting one of the mirror projects. Coming up next month is the spin casting of the 6.5 meter diameter substrate for the San Pedro Martir Observatory. To make as perfect a mirror as possible, over 11 tons of glass must be inspected and sorted before loading it into the mold to form the lightweight casting. My last couple posts about the Mirror Lab have talked about the mold making, so refer back for that info.


Besides handling large quantities of the magical looking blocks of glass, the sorting crew is a wonder to behold - everyone has their job and move as if part of a smoothly oiled machine. The boxes of glass individually wrapped in foam are unpacked, cleaned of particulates, inspected under crossed polaroid filters (more about that in a minute), sorted by seed content, reboxed and weighed. Meanwhile the scraps of foam are corralled and boxes recycled. Sorting the 10 tons of glass took a day and a half, so they were quite efficient indeed. Note that everyone wears gloves - the cleaved blocks are extremely sharp and gloves help keep that nasty blood off the glass!


Randy, head of the casting crew, individually inspects every piece of glass. Using a light box with a polarizing filter, the crossed polarizer in his glasses reveal stress in the glass. Usually associated with localized impurities or stria (index of refraction variations), remelting the glass doesn't always relieve the stress, so there is a reject box. If the stress is in a small area or near an edge, it can be cleaved out of the block. What does it look like under the polaroids? A "clean" chunk is featureless as shown at left. In the presence of stress at right, the plane of polarization is rotated, so appears as a bright spot or zone with the analyzing filter (click to enlarge images). This example was quite bad so was rejected.





The glass is also sorted for seeds - tiny bubbles or impurities within the blocks. The glass with fewest defects is set aside for placement on the top of the casting. These blocks will help form the faceplate of the telescope mirror and using the clearest glass correspondingly helps form a mirror surface with fewer defects.


And yes, as can be told from the name (Ohara Glass Corporation), it is a Japanese product. They go to a lot of work for the lab making a consistent batch-to-batch product, then cleave the batches into these blocks so that they melt together cleanly without trapping a lot of air bubbles. No other manufacturer has offered to go to that effort to assure the consistency of results on which we depend. We've had excellent results in the past, and expect to continue to use them in the future...

It Really is a Dry Heat!

As I come in from my evening walk tonight it is a comfortable 98F. Of course I'm in Tucson where the dewpoint is 43F and the humidity 16%. I was reminded of our time just over a week ago in San Antonio, TX where just standing, let alone going on a vigorous walk, you almost needed to hold your arms out to keep rivulets of sweat from running down your arms! BTW, current conditions there (1030pm CDT) are 88F with dew point of 71F and 60% humidity.

One reason it is more comfortable in Tucson is that the monsoon circulation has left us for the moment. Normally starting around July 4th and lasting about 10 weeks, rain comes to the desert, delivering about half our annual rainfall (about 12") in that time. The reasons are complicated, but with the subtropical "Bermuda High" in the right place and another high pressure area near the 4-corners area, air circulation is right to bring up moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, and with the daytime heating in the desert, sometimes violent thunderstorms result. During this time, the air is more humid, but it also doesn't get as hot as it can while dry. As a result, yesterday and today were cloudless for the first time since our return, and for my commute home it was a toasty 106F!

The photos above were shot from our roof yesterday - the infrared shots show off the thunderheads of the July storms, which have, for the moment, moved off to New Mexico, which I verified with a satellite image. The lower image shows a few fair weather cumulus hanging down towards old Mexico past the Santa Rita Mountains south of town.

I've gotten into the habit of taking evening walks after Melinda takes off from work. Five weeks ago it was common to see folks and families out for an evening stroll about sunset. But the last couple nights not a soul - 98F must be over their limit!

The Ketelsen's are: IN

We arrived home from the "Tour de Texas" this evening, thus concluding our official 'summer vacation'! While I was back in Tucson for a 7 night visit (6 nights of work to break up the vacation); Dean has been gone from home for a full month. Needless to say, it was a joyful reunion between him and the cats!

We had an uneventful driving trip (an improvement over last year when the wheel fell off about 50 miles from home) today, sharing the task of driving. Fortunately, we both enjoy driving. During my 'riding' time I explored learning to play the harmonica that our friend, Elinor, gave to me! I was a little too self-conscious to seriously try at it, but plan to practice and serenade Dean with "Red River Valley" (one of the songs in the accompanying booklet) as soon as possible!

We don't have many pictures to post from our visit with Elinor, however, we had a wonderful time with her! We visited with Elinor last year, on our trek to Tucson with the four cats along for the ride. She was disappointed that we didn't have any cats with us this time, though she now has 'joint custody' of a sweet little kitty named Missy. Missy started as her neighbors cat, but now travels between the two houses - spending most nights with Elinor. Our first night at Elinor's I came upon my first scorpion. I was so excited that I grabbed Dean out of the bathroom to kill it! I had never seen one (they sneak into houses when no one is the wiser) alive, and I'm told by Dean and Elinor that this one was 'big'. It was about 2.5 - 3 inches long. Did I stretch it out on a ruler to verify....NO. You'll have to take my (and Dean's) word on it!


We also, with Elinor, spent an afternoon in Marfa, Texas - a small town about 26 miles west of Alpine. Marfa is a growing artist community, though many of the galleries were closed on Monday, the day we chose to spend there. This picture is the county courthouse, as Marfa is the county seat. In a 'rough and tumble old west town' it was a delight to see this pristine Victorian jewel! We ate at a nice little cafe, having wonderful Mexican food, before taking in the shops in El Paisano Hotel.






El Paisano Hotel is noted for having been the place that some of the cast of the movie "Giant" (1955-Eliazbeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean) stayed during the local filming of that movie. For you movie buffs out there, that was James Dean's last movie before his death in a car crash (1955). The first floor of the hotel is filled with galleries and shops, though the lobby, dining room, and swimming pool are very elegant in the 'grand old hotel' sense of the word.

Marfa is also known for a phenomenon called "The Marfa Lights". The lights are unexplainable 'orbs of light' that sometimes show up in the sky (oh so scarey!!!), and 'dance' around! There have been articles about them, they have been studied, and they date back to over 100 years, or so some sources report. We did not go out in search of the Marfa lights, opting instead to relax and enjoy dinner and a nice glass of wine (and/or beer) at home with Elinor.

We both agreed that while it's nice to get home from a vacation, we enjoyed being able to spend a couple of nights with each of the relatives/friends we stayed with in Texas. One night is never enough, so two nights was just about perfect! To the family/friends we visited who are reading this blog entry: thank you! We had a great time and are so happy to have been able to spend some time with you!

Hotter than %$!! in Texas

It is a mite warm here in Texas - supposedly only 98F today, but considerably more humid than we are used to in Arizona. Yesterday we left Dallas, and the comfortable confines of sister-in-law Susan's house. We had a great time with her and nephew Brian, mostly hanging out, enjoying some great meals, going to the movies, but mostly stayed inside where it was cool. Brian is taking a break from all the summer camps he has done this Summer, but his brother Rhett and Dad Bill were on a camping trip in New Mexico, so didn't get to see them. Here is a shot of Susan and Brian before we departed for San Antonio.


The trip down was uneventful, but traffic was bad both getting out of Dallas and passing through Austin at the peak of rush hour. Almost easy to predict, but what can you do? We got in about 6:30 - just in time to jump back in the car and head out to a local steakhouse for dinner.


This is our first trip to San Antonio and my sister Sheri was carefully planning our every hour to get a taste of the place. First stop this morning (after a breakfast of fresh-and-hot coffee cake!) was a stop at the Alamo. It is smaller than you expect - at least the mission shrine is quite small. Interestingly, no fee was charged for any part of the visit, though the gift shop (with some exhibit space) is larger than the mission. And of course, the downtown development has built up skyscrapers across the street, so I guess we are lucky any of the Alamo still exists at all! Sheri's husband Tim is off on a family trip to Indiana, so we don't get to see him. In the photos are their 14-year-old Brittany, and 7 year-old Colton.


Our visit downtown seemed mostly to consist of ducking into buildings to get out of the oppressive heat. After the Alamo visit, we headed west a block or two to the Buckhorn Saloon and the "Hall of Horns". Rated a "Must-See" by Susan, we did lunch at the Saloon and paid the premium price for the museum which really was a very entertaining 90 minutes and well worth it. On display over the dining area was every sort of stuffed horned or antlered animal and many that didn't have horns. In the museum were also displays of African interests, finned creatures (mostly fish), unusual displays of all sorts of natural and historical interests.



We spent the hottest part of the day there, and left for the famed "Riverwalk" area - really a subterranean man made river that goes for seemingly miles. It exists under street level, connecting bars, restaurants and other shopping areas - almost like a pedestrian mall under street level, with trees, gardens, and river with guided boat excursions! I'm not sure if the trees and water made it seem cooler or if there was a real effect, but the return to street level seemed to increase the misery again.


As we headed for home, while we stopped for a DVD to watch, the dark clouds that had formed dumped, and the view out the window reminded us of the hurricane coverage from the Gulf of Mexico with sheets of horizontal rain. But the storm did cool things off dramatically and the evening was pretty pleasant, though we mostly stayed inside and enjoyed "The Coneheads" (remember - family friendly) brought to mind from the hall of mirrors at the Buckhorn Saloon.


After an all-too-brief visit, the plan is to hit the road again tomorrow, heading west towards Alpine, Texas. It will be a longer day driving, but shouldn't have any problem making it...

Back on the Road...

Just a quick note why we've not posted lately. Well, between the driving and the visiting with friends and family, there just aren't enough hours in the day. So be assured we are fine and currently somewhere between Dallas and Tucson. Today (Friday) we are leaving sister-in-law Susan's delightful home in Dallas, and headed to sister Sheri's house near San Antonio. Then Sunday we head towards Alpine, Texas for a stop to visit friend Elinor. Supposed to be home by Tuesday. We will likely have Internet access at our stops, so we may post, but it may wait till home too. See you down the road!